Nothing stops Swarner

KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii – Sean Swarner remembers watching the Ironman World Championship when he was 13. He would watch the grueling race on television from a hospital bed while undergoing chemotherapy.

Swarner, who is now 34 and lives in Boulder, Colo., will attempt to finish the 140.6-mile endurance test Saturday. It’s the most recent goal he has set for himself as a two-time cancer survivor.

“I just want to let people see that cancer is just a speed bump in life,” he said Wednesday.

At age 13, Swarner was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system, and was given three months to live. The chemotherapy treatments left him with a 60-pound weight gain, loss of hair and a catheter scar on his chest.

“No one recognized me, and that was tough for an eight-grader going through cancer,” he said.

After a year of treatment, the cancer went into remission. But at age 16, X-rays during a routine checkup found a golf ball-sized tumor in a lung.

He was diagnosed with Askin’s Sarcoma, a rare form of cancer with a high mortality rate, and given two weeks to live.

After three months of intensive chemotherapy, one month of radiation therapy and another 10 months of chemotherapy, he survived. The treatments required hospitalization and being put in an induced coma.

“I had no control over my body functions and they didn’t want me to remember,” he said. “It’s mostly a blur.”

Again, the cancer went into remission, and a year after his last treatments, he won the 880 meters for Willard High School in the 1993 Northern Ohio League track and field championships.

After high school, he enrolled at Westminster College in Pennsylvania.

“In my small town, I was known as the cancer boy. In college, I could start over,” he said. “No one knew me. No one knew I had cancer. I wanted to leave that part behind me.”

He went through a period of self-reflection and, “one day I realized that cancer helped make me who I am.

“I still had a lot of issues I had to deal with myself, but I wanted to try to help people and give them hope. People can live 30 days without food, but no human can live more than 30 seconds without hope.”

He’s been trying to provide inspiration for others through athletic accomplishments.

Swarner climbed to the peak of Mount Everest on May 16, 2002. That was followed by climbs to the highest mountain peaks on the other six continents.

He and his brother started the CancerClimber Association, a not-for-profit organization that encourages cancer patients to inspire others.

It awards project grants to cancer survivors with the requirement that they visit local hospitals and share their stories.

Swarner attributes his survival to modern medicine, prayer and “an inner will to keep going.”

After the Ironman, he plans to continue climbing and trek to the North and South poles.

“Cancer was the worst thing that happened to me but also was the best thing that happened to me, because it taught me so much about life,” he said.